GM killing off Chevy Volt, Cruze, Impala and Buick LaCrosse cars

Automaker likely to shut down four U.S. assembly plants, along with Oshawa, Ontario facility, as part of restructuring

General Motors said it will cut more than 10,000 salaried staff and factory workers and close five factories in North America by the end of next year, part of a sweeping realignment to prepare for a future with a greater number of purely electric vehicles.

Four factories in the U.S. and one in Canada, in Oshawa, Ontario, could be shuttered by the end of 2019 if the automaker and its unions don’t come up with an agreement to allocate more work to those facilities, GM said in a statement Monday.

Along with two other factory closures outside North America, the company is jettisoning some of its slower-selling sedans. Specifically, GM said the company will cut the Buick LaCrosse, Chevrolet Impala and Cadillac CT6 sedans next year.

The Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid will also be dropped along with the Chevy Cruze compact, which will be made in Mexico for other markets.

The cuts come on the heels of surprisingly strong third-quarter earnings. GM CEO Mary Barra is trying to make the company leaner as U.S. auto demand slides from a record in 2016 and sales in China – GM’s other profit center – are also in a slump.

“We’re taking these actions while the economy is strong,” Barra told reporters in Detroit. “This industry is changing very rapidly. We want to make sure we’re well-positioned. We think it’s appropriate to do it while company is strong and the economy is strong.”

The plan to cut 15 percent of salaried workers follows a round of buyouts that GM offered to about a quarter of its longer-tenured workforce at the end of October. GM said the cuts will boost automotive free cash flow by $6 billion by the end of 2020 and result in one-time charges of up to $3.8 billion in the fourth quarter of this year and first quarter of 2019.

The likely shutdowns have already opened up GM to political pushback, with Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tweeting he has expressed “deep disappointment” with Barra directly.

The U.S. plants are in places that have been economically devastated by job losses and pressure on wages for decades, which helped lead to the 2016 election of Donald Trump as president.

GM is cutting more than 6,000 hourly and salaried workers at its plants and 15 percent of the salaried workers in North America for a total of more than 10,000.

While GM is buying out and laying off workers in its core auto operations, the automaker has added close to 1,000 people in the past year at its Cruise autonomous cars division.